Is life’s intended route towards the Anthropecene?

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Is ‘man’ life’s equivalent of a stars ‘white dwarf’ stage?

If one finds solidarity and truth in the theories of the existence of life, as put for forward by James Lovelock in The Gaia Theory, and by Lynn Margulis in The Symbiotic Planet, which see life as a complete system, just like the one of the sun or the solar system, self regulating, a super organism ….rather than just lots of separate species’, I have have started wondering if man (the intelligent being) is the self destructing stage of life, like a white dwarf is the signifier of a stars end.
I have wondered if it plausible to see humanity as the final process in the life of life itself, like the white dwarf is the final process in the life of a star. To make this clearer, a star goes though a life process and the last stage of this process is a white dwarf, maybe life is a similar functioning system?, but by using different dynamics.

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The success of life on earth as largely been down to the process of survival of the fittest However, in a system that ensures the more adaptable will survive above others – as long as no catastrophe knocks this process back, as in the case of the Dinosaurs – a species will surely evolve which is too clever, and breaks free and disrupts the systems that hold everything else together, eventually to an extent that everything collapses – this is mankind now.

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Perhaps when this system, which we know as life, is ready for popping its clogs, it has reach a stage where it develops a creature within, which finally kills it off. This, to us is know as the – anthropocene – as mankind becomes so dominant it kills off everything, upon which he too depends on, bringing about the death of life on planet Earth. Just like a star, when the system of life has used up its lifespan, it changes into its death clothes.
I really hope this isn’t true, I quite like this thing we call ‘life’ and green is most certainly the nicest of colours!

More ideas on life’s intended route to Anthropecence

Was the planet Venus (the ‘second’ rock from the sun) now with an atmosphere of 96 per cent carbon dioxide, makings it’s average temperature 500 degrees Celsius, the previous home of life in the solar system? Before it moved on to Earth? Does life -if one sees life’s ‘life’ as a complete system in the same way that a stars life is – jump from planet to planet in search of hospitable places to keep itself going?
Due to the order of the system of life, which ensures the survival of the fittest, there must, at some point, develop a species that is so advanced that it cannot be contained in the symbiotic systems which hold the whole of life together, and it starts to undo everything. This life form on Earth is us. Maybe there was once a species, much like us, which made Venus inhospitable, killing itself off in the process, but before it did so, it sent the seeds of life into space to colonize somewhere else, maybe that somewhere was Earth.
Maybe this is a process built into the system of life -spreading its seed from a doomed existence on one planet to another – to keep itself going, in the Universe, for as long as possible, possibly for eternity. The development of a species that cannot help but undo life on one planet is inevitable, therefore it must spread its seed to another place and the process starts again, keeping life going. Life may be a parasite upon the Universe.
So then, one may ask ‘why bother to spread the seeds of life to another place, if life is nothing more than a planetary parasite?’ The reason why is because ‘we are life’. We are instinctively built to make sure it carries on, and not just the carrying on of humans, but our larger body; life itself. We will do this, if and when the time comes.
By this I do not mean that I care any less for humanities plight upon Earth right now, nor do I believe it is our sworn destiny to wipe both us and all other species of life from this planet. I think we have two choices; we let ourselves proceed in ruining our Earth, at a time when we do not have the technology to find a new home, or we do our best now, to make Earth sustainable for us, for a much greater period of time, giving us more time to figure out who we are and where we go next.

An intelligent species that finds itself no longer content and able in life’s symbiotic order, is surely an inevitable development in system of life. Life’s ruthless development process, which ensures the survival of the fittest, must surely guarantee (as long as no catastrophe, such as the one that wiped out the Dinosaurs out, occurs) the development of a living being, that is fully aware of its own existence and is capable of asking questions. As I have said earlier, I am just worried that this is the ‘last stop’ for life, in its journey on a planet.
‘Surely not’ you may ask ‘why would nature create a species which is capable of creating beautiful music, visual art and literature only for it to be engulfed back into the void of existence?’. Well, I suppose …the arts and the technologies are the inevitable products of a living creature which finds itself no longer part of the harmonious process of life, which he/she sees passing by every day of their lives. Perhaps ‘the arts’ are a by-product of the tail end of life, in its unstoppable quest to bring the curtains down on itself, almost as if it were applauding its own qualities at the end of its stay on earth. The creation of the arts coincides with the breaking of the symbiotic chain.

Here comes everybody, the final push!

I cannot remember exactly where I the title ‘Here comes everybody’ comes from, but when I first came into contact with the title, I was under the impression that it was referring to the sheer mass of ‘creative’ s’ out there In western countries ‘trying to be noticed’ via networking sites on the World Wide web. Millions upon millions trying to bring the attention of the World to their creative talents, a surge of ideas and opinions, a blitz of colourful expressions, and for this, I am one of those many millions, I suppose.

Referring back to my fears of an inevitable anthropecene, bringing us closer to the rim of the bowl of civisilation and then the end of life on Earth, it feels as if we (well, a great deal of of us) are getting the chance to express what it feels like to be a human. It is like we are all part one giant wave of creativity, as if life is showing off what it can do , just before the curtains close on its show. Like a star, that becomes a supernova – we will flash with colours of excellence, displaying everything nature as taught us, before we, and rest of life disappear.

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About John Ledger

A visual Artist, eternal meanderer and obsessive self-reflector by nature, who can’t help but try to interpret everything from within the tide of society. His works predominantly take the form of large scale ballpoint pen landscape drawings and map-making as social/psychological note-making. They are slowly-accumulating responses to crises inflicted upon the self in the perplexing, fearful, empty, and often personality-erasing human world.